Is it Worth Hiring a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert For Your Website?

Search engine optimization, or SEO experts are typically people that have vast amounts of experience in getting websites to the front page of relevant Google searches. Being on the front page of Google searches is a big deal, it can give you a lot of traffic and a lot of sales. But before you rush into the decision of hiring an SEO expert it's important to first determine whether it's actually worth it for your website.

There is no doubt that excellent SEO can make an otherwise worthless website successful. But SEO is not as important or relevant for some as it is for others. In this article I will help you determine whether it is worth hiring an SEO specialist is right for your website.

How Important is Your Website to Your Business?

This is the first most obvious question you should ask yourself. If you sell digital content like software or ebooks then your website is absolutely crucial to your business. However, if your website is just a place for you to list some prices and information then your website is probably a nice addition to your business but it's not that important.

How Much Traffic Does Your Website Currently Get and How Much Could it Get?

High traffic websites are generally a sign that your chosen niche is an extremely popular search topic or that maybe you already have excellent SEO. Low traffic, on the other hand, could be a sign that your web topic is just not highly sought-after or that you have poor SEO. It is pretty easy to determine whether SEO or an unpopular search topic is your website's problem.

Using the Google keyword tool you can see exactly how many people search for your websites topic, or keywords, each month. Simply enter a few different keywords or phrases into the tool (one per line) and search. It will show how many people search for each term each month both locally and globally. If the number is quite high (say 1500+) and you are not getting more than 30 visitors a month SEO could be your problem.

Keyword Tip: to determine what keywords to search for think about what a customer might type into Google if they were looking for your business or product.

Do You Have the Time to Learn and Implement Some Basic SEO Techniques Yourself?

Search engine optimization can seem quite scary but basic SEO is actually not that hard. Even a moderately web savvy person with a bit of free time could learn enough to do a bit of SEO themselves, likely even enough to get themselves to the front page (for free I should add).

Places to start with learning SEO for your website are:

Getting a basic keywords and how they work (you already know a little bit about this one). Simply knowing what keywords are and how Google and searchers use them will help you tremendously. With a bit of research you will learn to modify they way things are written on your website to better suit Google.

What backlinks are and how to create them. Backlinks are created every time someone links to your website. You should learn how to create them yourself if you want to help your website along. Pro tip: Anchor Text is very important.

Of course there are many more advanced aspects of SEO those two are the main ones and knowing them could be enough to get your website to the front page and into the money.

Is it Worth it?

If your website is important, has a high potential traffic (but isn't getting it) and you don't have the time or inclination to learn basic SEO yourself then it it may well be worth hiring an SEO expert for your website.

I hope this article has made the decision a little easier and perhaps saved a few of you some money you didn't need to spend!